Patchwork
by vacant houses
Summary: Crack. Nick toon. Michelangelo is a genius. It's his brothers who are idiots. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end.
1. Hidden horrors

TMNT= Not Mine

Okay. I'm drawing the line Nick toon. Overall, I've been enjoying the little things, the brotherly interactions and the fighting. I've been squeeing over those things, I have. I've been ignoring Don's crush on April, which is the most awkward thing ever, the plots have been mediocre, the villains laughable. There are some things however that are in excusable.

For Dee. All my crack is. Even the ones that had nothing to do with her in the first place. Kame, I totally stole your punchline. I admit it (Forgive me? O.O). I will now be able to look at that episode coherently and not devolve into an angry mass of raeg.

* * *

Splinter took in the girl before him. "You have a natural gift, a sensitivity I have spent many years trying to develop," he started.

April smiled and completely failed to demonstrate said sensitivity when she told him, "Don't worry, you'll get it."

The mutant internally frowned; perhaps he was mistaken about the girl. "I did, it just took me a long time."

"Well that's nothing to be ashamed of," April replied.

Splinter took a deep breath to summon patience. "What I am trying to say..." He paused, something did not feel right.

"...yes?" April prodded him.

Before Splinter could speak, a bright flash blinded him. There was a startled cry, it sounded female but it was not April. No, there was a new scent, an intruder! As Splinter's eyesight gradually returned, he took in the most outlandishly dressed woman he'd ever seen in his life. She was adorned with clocks and hourglasses and wielding a staff. To Splinter's confusion, April had not noticed the intruder. In fact…yes, April somehow was frozen.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow!" the stranger muttered to herself. "Yeesh, I know I'm cutting it close this time," –Splinter could not determine who she was speaking to though it clearly was not him – "But I'm here now, everything is going to be fine. Yes. It'll be fine. I mean, Splinter has never met yet me in this timeline and universe but I'm confident I can work things out. Could you please hang up now, Lord Sim? Seriously. It's all ok-yeek!"

The mutant grabbed the staff then wrenched it out of her hands. "Who," Splinter demanded coldly, "Are you? How did you get in here and how did you know my name?"

To his chagrin, the strange woman was entirely unconcerned that she had lost her weapon and was facing down an angry ninja master. "Oh, I'm Renet and I'm a Timestress," she said cheerfully, "In fact, I'm the Timestress in charge of like, your family, across the multiverse. Most people don't get a Timestress personally assigned to their case but you guys cause trouble across all dimension wherever you go. It's an enormous job and most other Timemasters didn't want to do it, but this is like, my way to the top. Of course, you guys are personal friends of mine in a few other dimensions so that helps big time."

Splinter narrowed his eyes at Renet. "You are a…bureaucrat from the cosmos," he said, trying to comprehend the situation. The woman was certainly not all there mentally but he could not detect any falsehoods from her. He still maintained a firm grip on her staff, just in case she went for it.

Renet deflated at his assessment. "Sorta like that yeah. But uh, more to do with the temporal and interdimensional side of things than the spiritual stuff."

"What are you doing here?" Splinter asked. "I cannot imagine that someone as… significant as yourself would intervene with my family without a reason."

Renet straightened and turned her full attention onto him. "Okay, so you were about to decide to train April right?" she said earnestly.

"Yes," the mutant affirmed, wondering how this was important.

"The thing is, April O'Neil is special. She's always been vital to your family, wherever they are in the multiverse. And the reason why she is so special is because she is a completely ordinary person. There is no reason to train April as a ninja because then you are depriving her of the very thing that makes her so unique. We'll just ignore the time she spent as Nobody and the other incident with the Stone Generals. Those were itty bitty anomalies that took us four hundred years to unwind and fix the spatial damage to the multiverse. We never did manage to recover that universe with the female mutant turtle but things were kinda crazy in there and we're not missing out on much. Anyway, you get what I'm saying right?"

Splinter frowned as he pondered this new information. "But her sensitivity…"

"I'm going to show you something Splinter. Your family might have a Chaos attracting meta-physical gene woven into your interdimensional DNA but the real reason why you've got a full time Timestress assigned to you is this-" Renet placed her hand on lightly on the end of her staff and it started to glow softly.

Faint spectres suddenly appeared in the dojo. They wandered through walls, through the floors and each other. They didn't appear aware of each other or the three people inside the dojo. The apparitions giggled to themselves and it was a terrifying sound, high pitched and all sounded female. Splinter's ears flattened against his skull unconsciously in fear.

"Some part of you has always been aware of them," Renet said sympathetically. "We don't have a name for these things but they normally appear as young, helpless girls that try to infiltrate your family. Somehow they manage to master ninjitsu in a matter of months when your sons have been training their entire lives. We don't know why but it's like your family has a terminal infection, these things always show up no matter which dimension you're in. Sometimes they have special abilities, which is why we're so worried about April's so called 'sensitivity'. We think it's possible that she's actually been replaced by one of them in this dimension, which would make it the first recorded case of these things becoming corporeal. I'm sorry by the way, I've been keeping your family safe for aages but even this is beyond my powers."

"These…creatures are dangerous?" Splinter studied the apparitions with disgust.

"They pretty much destabilise and shred universes apart," Renet affirmed. "They feed on your sons' personalities and turn them into empty husks of themselves."

"Is there a way to destroy them?" the mutant turned his attention to back to the Timestress, determined to protect his children.

Renet shook her head. "I'm afraid not. All you can do now is take preventative action and stop this one from becoming stronger. Aaand my time is up and I need to get out here soonish. It might take note and remove me from existence if I stick around any longer."

There was another bright flash and the dojo returned to its normal state.

"...yes?" April said.

Splinter studied the girl before him. "On second thought, never mind."


	2. Small comforts

TMNT= Not Mine

Because Nick is doing my head in with the inconsistencies. For DeeMG, who is becoming incredibly disturbed that Michelangelo is a genuinely stupid character in Nick-verse and that his family still picks on him despite his mental inadequacy. Hopefully this will make her feel better about it.

* * *

His brothers were idiots. This realisation had slowly been building over his life as he noticed a few glaring inconsistencies of their lives that his brothers remained oblivious to. Scratch that, his brothers were _stupid_. Or maybe he was a genius and no one had bothered to acknowledge it.

"Like, like the algae and worms thing," he mumbled drunkenly into the lap of the really, really weirdly dressed lady.

He couldn't exactly recall how he'd gotten into this situation. There he was, minding his own business skating down a sewer pipe when he'd been attacked by a strange glowing…thing. It had gone for his head and chomped down really painfully and something inside of him broke. He wasn't sure what it was but he was pretty sure it was an intangible part of him. He'd been taken down by a spiritual attack by something that looked like a glowing furby. Why was he not surprised that this was the way things would end for him?

"It'll be okay Mikey," the stranger soothed. It sounded like she was crying. He didn't know who she was but it was pretty clear she knew him…probably from another dimension. The woman had appeared out of thin air after all before banishing his attacker. And she was covered in clocks and hourglasses. Right. "Just keep focused and tell me why the algae and worms thing didn't make sense."

"Okay. It all ties in how weird Sensei is. Like. Really, really weird. Like, rarely leaves the sewer ever weird. The guy is a ninjitsu Master. And he was human. And yet for some reason he saw fit to raise us on algae and worms. My brothers just accepted it. I mean, come on. When he did bother going to the surface, he got lettuce for Spike. You know real food. He got real food for Raph's stupid pet turtle and gave us disgusting algae and worms," Michelangelo raged. "What kind of messed up reasoning is that?"

"That's…good," the lady said, though she couldn't hide the grossed out look on her face. "Were there any other incidents of weirdness?"

Mikey let out a half-hysterical laugh. "Splinter didn't seem capable of leaving the lair. He was always like, here's how you defeat this enemy. I'll just stay down here and stick my thumbs up my nose and ignore that my sons are in danger. And then, then there was that incident with the phone. Our very existence was under the risk of exposure and what did Splinter do? He used it as a training exercise to teach Raphael how to control his anger. That guy could have had the video uploaded to the internet in a matter of seconds and we had to play nice instead. And-and then he got mutated into a ginormous butt ugly spider and he decided to kill us! What was up with that? Do normal humans secretly have raging psychopaths inside, just waiting to be mutated so they can unleash their inner fury? That guy was a stupid Joe average. And why could he spit acid? Spiders don't spit acid. _WHY?_"

"There are some things that are just inexplicable," his companion said sympathetically. "I'm afraid you're paying the price right now for noticing them."

"I'm dying," Mikey stated dully. He didn't feel like he was dying actually. More like he had a bad case of indigestion. "I'm dying and I'll never understand why my family got mutated into humanoid creatures and why Snakeweed and Spiderbytes got mutated into monsters. And why we never saw pizza on the television and yet we watched news reports and cartoons. Also, why did Don decide to plug a military AI into a music player? For someone commonly described as a technogeek and genius, that did not seem all that smart. And then there was that time, with Rad-Brad and Xever. When Rad-Brad stuck his sword into the mutagen bomb and sent a wave of it into the streets. What did my brothers do? They _celebrated_. And then they had the gall to look at me like I was the crazy one when I didn't join. A whole tidal wave of mutagen had gone into the street and we were insanely lucky that only Shredder's goons were the ones that got mutated. Or maybe we just never saw the other victims. Also. Still dying."

"In a way," the stranger brushed his forehead comfortingly. "You got hit by, well; the concept is a bit hard to explain. It's a temporal modifying monster that feeds on intelligence. It just ate a large chunk of your mind and, uh, since it's a temporal creature-"

"-My entire existence is being written," Michelangelo groaned. His eyes slid shut against the pain. "I'm going to be an idiot," he said with horror.

"Only in this dimension though," the stranger offered, chewing a lip nervously. "It's really not that bad."

The turtle raised his head to glare at her. "Hello! Existence being rewritten to stupid here. I think it's pretty damn bad!"

"Well at least it wasn't a spatial modifier that got you," the interdimensional traveller defended herself weakly. "Then you'd genuinely be stupid across all dimensions. And you won't uh, notice all the inconsistencies around you this time."

"Small mercies," Mikey muttered bitterly. "But that isn't going to be me, is it?"

The stranger's eyes grew round and sad. "No," she said softly. "It's not going to be you. Well. It will be you but it won't be you. It's complicated. The other downside on a much larger scale is that the new Mikey is going to be very unstable, dimensionally speaking. Everything else hasn't been changed but you have. Your family is going to instinctively rebel against the new Mikey because he won't feel right to them."

"Wonderful," the turtle muttered sullenly. After a moment's consideration, he brightened. "Don's crush on April won't be so painful to watch anymore, right?"

The stranger gave a wan smile. "Yeah," she affirmed.

"Eh," Mikey said. "I can live with that."


End file.
